Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1075510422617219077 <comment><USER2> I've been mad at the Go community in particular for continuing to promote Slack for ages, and this is __exactly __the hypothetical situation I always use to explain why (although there are other reasons too; Slack is a perfect embodiment of everything wrong with this industry, but that needs a fuller writeup). At a previous job we had to start doing this exact same thing when we were considering going public; this is the point at which I started considering leaving.

Using a proprietary protocol that doesn't allow any form of federation is an unacceptable way to build a global community. Please consider using an IRC based service for group chat or an XMPP based service where 1:1, history, rapid reconnects, and other more complex chat features are required (yes, if you're a dev you have to use XML which is annoying, but overall it's a well designed protocol, so get over it). This lets you host your own, and (in the case of XMPP at least) if one person wants to use a U.S. based service and another is in Iran they can just sign up for a Belgian account (or wherever). We can't afford to let he internet splinter off into siloed tiers based on nationality.

<comment><USER3> I would love to see more things built on open protocols. But for that to be the case, we have to find ways to make better apps built on top of open protocols.

We should start by admitting that Slack beat IRC. Beat it like a cheap hallway rug. IRC was always a terrible experience for novices, and it wasn't a great experience for experts. That it had any users at all is a testament not to IRC, but to what it enabled. Slack found a way to provide the same value but with a much better user experience. And then they rapidly iterated on that experience, making it better and better.

They started out with IRC and XMPP bridges. But they eventually shut those down because they were a drag on improving the product. When faced with the same choice, IRC kept the original protocol and shut down improving the product. This was an understandable choice, but one that set up the situation where commercial developers could come in and do something radically better. Open source needs to figure out how to compete with that, or things like this will keep happening.

<comment><USER4> I think as ethical, intelligent and conscious individuals, we folks in the developer and hacker community want people to make decisions on the basis of principles, when the reality is that people generally make decisions on the basis of convenience. In fact, people are often willing to _sacrifice_ their principles (to a certain extent) in the name of convenience.

If we want people to use principled technology, then we need to be able to honestly advertise products as "it's just as good as X, and also doesn't violate [your privacy|human rights|the environment|etc.]" If we have to say, "It's not quite as good, but..." then we're dead in the water. (Side note: I switched to Firefox out of principle and I'm hopeful it will hold the line on market share, since it really is just as good as Chrome.)

The issue is that we're dealing with corporations who aren't just rich and powerful, they are also innovative, agile, and laser-focused on providing consumer value. Slack is doing an amazing job at serving their users!

You wrote, "we have to find ways to make better apps built on top of open protocols." It's a really interesting dilemma and I suspect it's one that isn't solved by better technology, better design, etc., but rather by addressing the base economics of the situation. We need a scenario where principled, open-source, ethical technology is generating the kind of investment we're seeing in Silicon Valley unicorns so they can innovate the same way.

<comment><USER5> If we want people to use principled technology, it has to be usable, full stop. As a developer, being able to say "I'm willing to sacrifice convenience, in the name of principle", is a privileged position - you _know_ how to navigate software when it gets difficult - other people don't.

What I find a lot of people miss when comparing Slack to IRC, is that not everyone using Slack is a developer. The world doesn't consist solely of developers - and if your company is 30% of engineers, and the other 70% doesn't have the reserve to wrestle with XML, then your company is using Slack. Otherwise, you are simply choosing to sell out your friends and family in the name of "principle" as well.

Personally, I'm tired of the comparisons to IRC and XMPP. Both are garbage - time and time again its been show how difficult it is to create greate software on these protocols. Contrary to your final statement, there have been better open source applications - gitter and riot come to mind.

<comment><USER6> > What I find a lot of people miss when comparing Slack to IRC, is that not > everyone using Slack is a developer.

I know plenty of non-technical people who chatted on IRC who were not developers. They just used the mIRC client on windows to do that. They also managed to configure their email and news clients to send and read email and browse usenet.

I simply don't understand where the idea of needing a technical background came from for using something like IRC.

<comment> ry-n > I know plenty of non-technical people who chatted on IRC who were not > developers > I simply don't understand where the idea of needing a technical > background came from for using something like IRC.

You don't have to be a developer but you do need a level of technical background higher than that of the average computer user. There are plenty of tech-savvy, non-developers who can get up and running with things like IRC. There are plenty more non-technical users who can't. Or at least wouldn't given the learning curve time commitment.

I'm the only person in my family who would be able to sign on to IRC in under an hour whereas they'd all be able to have slack up and running in a matter of minutes.

<comment><USER6> > You don't have to be a developer but you do need a level of technical > background higher than that of the average computer user.

Unless the technical skill of the average computer user has decreased substantially in the last 10 to 15 years, that shouldn't really be the case.

<comment><USER7> It has. Everyone uses computers now for less technical tasks, and some pretty much only use their phone or tablet.

<comment><USER8> Time to learn something then.

<comment><USER9> Sure... they learned Slack.

<comment><USER8> Nothing to learn there.

<comment><USER9> I don't think you realise how well you just made the case for using Slack instead of IRC or XMPP with that comment.

<comment><USER8> No. I expect a certain competence when using a computer. If this level of competence is not enough to even install a piece of software and configure the most basic settings, then this person should not own a PC, yet use one.

It's amazing that when it comes to computers, it is somehow acceptable to be dumb. It's acceptable to not learn new stuff. It's acceptable to not read in order to understand stuff. As can be read in the comments here.

<comment><USER9> Do you want to be 'right', or actually have users?

The whole ethos of startups and Silicon Valley has been around finding a market for your product. If people don't want to use it then you can't blame anyone but yourself.

Feel free to chat with yourself using an ideologically pure system... it'll be lonely though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So it _seems_ that Slack is going through their log files and closing down accounts that have used IP addresses that are considered to be in embargoed countries. I base that assumption on various comments here and on Twitter.

If true, it is definitely the worst way to do. It doesn't take into account any circumstantial evidence that could explain the use of such an IP address (vacation, VPN, BGP or a mistake in the geolocation data used) and Slack doesn't seem to offer any way to appeal or even inform other users about what happened to their contacts.

Slack should offer a configurable notification that could contain other contact methods to the banned user. Slack could also give those users at least sth like 48 hours to inform their contacts about what is going to happen. And it could offer banned users a downloadable archive of all content created to make sure no data is lost.

But the way Slack is doing it right now means that you can't trust them and one should really think about relying on their services in the future.

I am still on IRC and XMPP (Jabber) for good reasons ;)

<comment><USER10> This is very disturbing for ways that some folks might not realize. One of the servers I've leased was assigned an IP address range whose reverse DNS (i.e., PTR records) ended in .ir.

I only discovered this because I was trying to use Google's CLI tools and got blocked, with the shocking message that access from embargoed countries was not allowed. I was utterly confused given that my server, myself, and anything to do with my hosting was all contained completely within the US. After studying the message and finally figuring out after some time the problem, I reported it to my host and they promptly submitted a correction to that, and the issue was resolved.

But had I somehow used this host to access Slack, I would find my own account deleted, if what is being deduced here is correct.

Deleting or disabling accounts is completely the wrong approach. The absolutely maximum that could be done is BLOCKING ACCESS (i.e., actually embargoing) from these restricted IPs. Disabling or deleting accounts is stupid and shows that Slack has a profound MISUNDERSTANDING of how the Internet works, i.e., it's not perfect. This is exactly akin to using an IP address for identification. IP addresses, and hostnames, are not identification of people and cannot nor should be used for these kinds of heavy-handed, punitive punishments.

<comment><USER11> Wow. But yes. I recall news from a year or two ago, about hosting providers not cleaning up old PTR records. Also, I gather that there's quite the market now for IPv4 blocks, so geolocation is an iffy thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My wife's Slack account was closed yesterday.

She created the account while traveling in Cuba (legally) years ago and hasn't been back to Cuba or any other sanctioned country since.

She is a cofounder of an org that uses Slack heavily and has now lost access to all her messages and files from the past couple years of work.

There appears to be no appeal process here.

<comment><USER13> If Slack did this because of her trip to Cuba years ago it means they have kept records of her IP going back years.

This causes me to think about the metadata records they have held onto in addition to all the data.

<comment><USER12> Right, which should also indicate that this trip to Cuba wasn't part of a pattern but rather an anomaly.

I understand the complex legal frames that this exists in, but they appear to have the data to be way more precise here.

<comment><USER14> They may have the data, but they have no incentive to care whether or not their inferences are correct. This is a common problem with ostensibly data- driven companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow the Twitter thread and the experiences which are mentioned here sound so extreme and crazy that I am seriously confused to what believe.

\- Is this all made up to prove some point?

\- Is this just how the US ticks right now?

\- Is Slack just completely gone mad?

\- Is this what companies believes is acceptable nowadays?

\- Is this the future of the web?

The fact that I am not sure what to believe and that I wouldn't be surprised if this is all true or equally all made up is what really scares me. Ten years ago I would have had a lot more confidence and faith in the world that this must be either a big mistake or something fishy, but today I feel like anything goes and in a week's time nobody will care again :(

<comment><USER16> I don't think this is the future of the web.

This sort of thing is a temporary blip before everybody figures out decentralised solutions for everything.

Decentralisation is clearly the end game as long as politics causes problems like this. A decentralised solution will continue to "just work", while centralised solutions continue to boot people off. It's pretty obvious which one is going to win.

<comment><USER17> Except looking at the past 20 years or so it seems clear that the trend is going the other way around. Slack itself is an example of that, not long ago it would've been a set of self-hosted tools. People have ditched IRC in favor of Discord and friends, they've ditched decentralized forums, BBSs and mailing lists for social networks, everybody hosts everything using the same four or five cloud providers, streaming and direct download is much more popular than BitTorrent etc...

Maybe this trend will reverse eventually but I don't really see the signs yet. The Cryptocurrency crowd keeps shouting "decentralization" but they still fail to create applications that can compete with the centralized alternatives in terms of usability, performance and cost. There have been many attempts at making decentralized social networks but they failed to gain mainstream adoption. IPFS works pretty well but again, hardly anybody uses it.

I'm all for decentralization but there's no denying that there seems to be a path of least resistance towards centralized solutions. They're easier to develop, easier to maintain, easier to upgrade and often easier to use.

So for me decentralization is the objective, but unfortunately it's not "clearly the end game".

<comment><USER18> This is a bit of a shameless plug, but I just made a Show HN post about Glowing Bear, which is a web front-end for the WeeChat IRC client: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18725038](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18725038). It's entirely implemented as client-side javascript, and you can easily self- host it without any requests being made to other servers. For me, it solves the problem of accessing IRC wherever I am without having to fumble with ssh on my phone or monospace text. And it doesn't have the limited functionality of these modern web IRC clients implemented in node because it's just a front- end for WeeChat, which is one of the most powerful IRC clients around.

Regarding your note on the path of least resistance leading to centralized solutions---Glowing Bear/WeeChat is definitely more work to set up than just signing up for Slack. You need a machine that runs WeeChat and get a TLS certificate so that the browser will let you connect securely. That definitely limits it to a somewhat nerdy demographic, even among the HN readers ;)

<comment><USER19> Weechat (with weechat android and glowingbear), IRCCloud, and Quassel (with Quasseldroid and quassel-webserver) are indeed awesome solutions for IRC.

(Personally, I'm ofc biased, as I'm the dev of [https://quasseldroid.info/](https://quasseldroid.info/)).

But I think for these solutions to gain more mainstream appeal, we'd need to make the setup much simpler, and work on ideally making it a single-click solution for an organization to set this up for their members. And maybe even provide hosted services (similar to IRCCloud) for the many users that would rather pay than run their own servers.

<comment><USER18> Yes, you're absolutely correct. Setup is indeed more complicated than it should be for Glowing Bear. I would love to have an automated solution for it, I just don't want to be the one to build it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Aside from the obvious wrong of blocking people based on their origin, what's up with these companies closing accounts with no warning and no recourse? I know they're private companies and they _can_ do it, but just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Why not give the user even a few days notice so they can communicate with support to try and clear things up? Taking the OP's story at face value, Slack should easily be able to verify with him that he lives in Canada. Instead, they simply block it and bye. I find this extremely hostile.

<comment><USER21> > I know they're private companies and they _can_ do it, but just because you > can doesn't mean you should.

Actually, if you look at the image, Slack is beholden to US law, export regulations and economic sanctions - companies doing business with countries they shouldn't are in big trouble. See also: Huawei, who despite sanctions continued to do business with Iran, which caused the US to give them a huge fine. I don't know how that works given how Huawei is a Chinese company, but there you go.

To clarify: private companies are not and should not be above the law.

<comment><USER22> This is another strong case for open source software development along with open, publicly available, standards and protocols.

This isn't about Slack, it isn't about US sanctions law. It is about any private entity creating closed sourced, remotely hosted software. Everyone knows that APIs can be pulled at any time (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) Spying can be mandated whether it is the US government, China, or anyone else.

As end users it is never clear what is going on behind the curtain. It is never certain the product will be here tomorrow - whatever the reason. No one would build a high rise where all of the elevators could suddenly vanish, yet we are increasingly putting the critical pieces of our businesses and our lives in the hands of entities that only need to flick a switch and everything _instantly_ vanishes.

<comment><USER23> To put a finer point on it: open communications protocols driven by free software and end-to-end encryption both are and should be above the law, at least where the law purports to create national boundaries on the internet.

 _Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather._

 _We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear._

[https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence](https://www.eff.org/cyberspace- independence)

<comment><USER24> That's a nice fantasy but the reality is that humans and computers still have to physically exist inside national boundaries. Flesh and steel still count for a lot.

<comment><USER14> That's why free/libre software advocates talk so frequently about technologies that could abstract flesh and steel away.

<comment><USER24> How exactly would that work?

<comment><USER25> Tor, bittorrent, bitcoin and other decentrialized open source software are great examples. No government can control what no one controls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow. This seems rather unprecedented and unnecessary, based upon the lack of action in this regard by other companies I don't know why Slack would do this. If for instance this kind of arbitrary action took place on GitHub I could see it having a detrimental impact to free software projects. This is another good reason to choose Zulipchat and other self-hostable platforms instead of proprietary SaaS solutions.

<comment><USER27> >This is another good reason to choose Zulipchat and other self-hostable platforms instead of proprietary SaaS solutions

until someone targets your host and gets it shut down.

<comment><USER28> I'm not familiar with Zulipchat specifically but unless you're running a community with thousands of concurrent users then you could easily host most self-hostable chat platforms on a low powered devices (eg Raspberry Pi) on a home broadband internet connection.

Obviously this is a less than ideal solution, but my point is you're not reliant on AWS / OVH / Digital Ocean / whoever you choose for hosting.

<comment><USER29> You are still reliant on your isp however.

<comment><USER30> Don't forget your electricity provider as well. Of course you could run a solar system and mesh WiFi.

<comment><USER16> Even if you run a solar system with mesh WiFi, you're still reliant on getting food and clean water.

/s

Incremental improvements are still improvements, even if you still rely on some people for some things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What a great reason to switch to an open-source, self-hosted solution. Fortunately there exist several:

[http://sdelements.github.io/lets-chat/](http://sdelements.github.io/lets- chat/)

[https://rocket.chat/](https://rocket.chat/)

[https://mattermost.com/](https://mattermost.com/)

[https://zulipchat.com/](https://zulipchat.com/)

<comment><USER32> Has anyone here used any of these? I'd love to hear your thoughts vs Slack.

<comment><USER33> From my experience with Rocket Chat I'd argue it's about a 30% implementation of Slack when it comes to features and polish.

My favorite gripe with it is that quickly typing half a username and auto completing will select the first (or some random) user that's doesn't have anything to do with what you typed. It's a real pain if you're a fast typist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Welcome to the brave new world of the "cloud": you data, business, money, most intimate secrets and livelihood is at the whims of a foreign corporation that will stop at nothing if it means 2 cents more on their bottom line, or gets them on the good side of a government entity.

You have no rights, you have no intrinsic human valuu and you have no means to fight for yourself.

<comment><USER35> >Welcome to the brave new world of the "cloud":

If you don't hold it, you don't own it. HN types seem to not get this, at all, they think companies should indefinitely preserve all their data and make it available on demand, no matter what, in-perpetuity. The MailChimp thread yesterday now this one and the gods help you if you suggest people backup their data regularly instead of relying upon a 3rd party to always have it available for them.

If you don't hold it, you don't own it.

<comment><USER36> Remember yesterday's thread from the guy who lost his MailChimp account suddenly? Nobody learns, and we're going to keep reading these articles over and over while "cloud" is still a thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This kind of thing can kill Slack or other networks because if you have a team of 100 people and just one can't use the platform, you'll switch. The network effect seems likely to work in reverse in this case.

Beyond that I find it outrageously unethical.

<comment><USER21> > Beyond that I find it outrageously unethical.

What, complying with national and international sanctions and erring on the side of caution? Losing part of your customer base is preferable over getting fined to the tune of hundreds of millions of USD.

<comment><USER37> If the sanctions demand this, then the sanctions are outrageously unethical. If the sanctions don't explicitly demand it and banning ethnic Iranians is just "erring on the side of caution" then yes, sorry, but Slack is being outrageously unethical. Even if the sanctions do demand it, to me this is a reason to seriously consider either moving Slack to another jurisdiction like Canada, the EU, Switzerland, etc., or proudly face the fine.

What's the alternative? Just hide your Iranian/Persian colleagues and friends under the digital rafters? It's plain wrong, and I refuse to be on that side of history. If Slack needs to risk a massive fine then that's their duty, so yes, face the fine, take it to the Supreme Court. To be honest, doing anything else is unpatriotic as well as unethical.

<comment><USER38> > consider either moving Slack to another jurisdiction like Canada, the EU, > Switzerland

I wouldn't put Canada in the same company as the EU or especially Switzerland, Canada is generally very happy to play ball on these matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> A couple of our employees from Syria also got blocked today. They were using Slack from Syria though.

EDIT: I don't understand why they ban/block the _account_ rather than "simply" block access from IPs from the country. This seems really strange and overreaching.

<comment><USER16> > They were using Slack from Syria though.

This doesn't excuse anything. People in Syria are people too.

This is similar to how people were calling for websites to block access to Europe over the copyright thing. The internet is a place where you don't even need to _have_ a nationality. It is a place where we can all exist as pure thoughts. Why are we letting politics fuck it up?

<comment><USER40> The Syrian ban comes from a U.S. federal sanction. Not arguing that the sanction is right, or that Slack is correctly implementing its adherence, but this is not a similar situation to people calling for a boycott to make a point.

<comment><USER39> Yes, I can imagine it's hard for Slack to ignore those sanctions, but it does appear overzealous to ban individual accounts after having logged-in from Syria/Iran, instead of implementing a country ban from accessing slack. The latter would be far simpler from a technical standpoint, and I would imagine just as compliant with the sanctions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> When a company gets large or important enough it realizes that it has to follow some inconvenient laws.

In the US there's OFAC ([https://www.treasury.gov/about/organizational- structure/offi...](https://www.treasury.gov/about/organizational- structure/offices/Pages/Office-of-Foreign-Assets-Control.aspx)) which lists individuals and entities that companies cannot do business with. Implementing these rules is a nightmare for companies so they use a 3rd party services which produce a huge number of false positives. Middle eastern names tend result in many false positives.

My guess is that Slack is scrambling to clean house ahead of the IPO and they don't have a user friendly way of dealing with this. In fact most companies don't. This is the same crap that bites people who inadvertently end up on no- fly lists with no way to get off.

Don't like this? Call your representative. Build a better way to implement OFAC and similar laws.

</comment><comment><USER11> So is this really an accurate title?

It seems most likely that Slack has geolocated IP addresses from account access logs, and closed accounts with hits from sanctioned countries. Perhaps going back years.

That in itself seems over the top. But it doesn't constitute ethnic profiling.

But if someone has a counterexample, that would be OK too.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I would partly agree. But at the time I posted the link, I only had examples from Iranian people that are living in other countries using Slack and getting banned. Now that I have heard more stories about people from Syria and even one US person, I wouldn't post it again with that description.

I'll leave it to the mods to change the description accordingly, if they feel inclined to do so.

UPDATE: The mods have changed the description to "Is Slack shutting down accounts of those ethnically associated with Iran?"

<comment><USER11> I meant no criticism. I'm just trying to understand what they're doing. And damn, just the realization that they have access logs going back years is mind-boggling. If they didn't have the logs, they'd arguably be better off.

<comment><USER42> It's possible that they don't store access logs, but just keep the login history with time and location.

It's a lot less data and it's very useful to help with some customer issues, or legal matters like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> If they are just deleting accounts where someone logged in from a treasury- barred country's IP, I wonder what happens if you BGP hijack a small amount of that address space, somehow get admins or high profile users to connect via this (run WiFi? Some kind of proxy?), and then observe the chaos.

<comment><USER44> Or if a data breach allows for account data to be stolen, then one can spoof access attempts from such IPs and seek to DOS the account access.

If the removals are automated, then the most vulnerable accounts would be those of slack employees - or slack investors?

<comment><USER45> I don't think it's an access attempt that matters but actual access. You need to login via the API, not simply try and fail to get access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> If you work for an American company, get a bug report from a user you know to be in Iran against an open source project you work on during company time and fix it as a result, can the company be considered to be engaging in commerce with Iran?

<comment><USER47> Direct exchange of value has to take place.

In this case no, because fixing that bug in your project doesn't benefit him specifically.

<comment><USER48> But direct exchange goes two ways. Fixing a bug in your project does benefit the project specifically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> From a technical standpoint what they're saying is if your IP matches any of these countries, we cannot allow you on our services. It's got nothing to do with ethnicity if a Puerto Rican guy from Orlando goes to Iran and gets banned, it's all about the IP not the person.

Seems they might want to tone down their bans starting from the moment the policy came to be vs doing it from the dawn of Slack's time, not sure how the policy is written and I'm not a lawyer so maybe they went off from legal advise.

<comment><USER50> This would be perfect opportunity for some enterprising gray or blackhats to wreak havoc.

We know people reuse passwords. I'm sure there are a lot of weak accounts known, or at least suspected. So... if you had a large number of compromised slack accounts, and a complete lack of morals, you could log in with each of them to Slack through Iranian/Syrian proxies.

If Slack are indeed shutting down all accounts that have _ever_ logged in from Iran or Syria, the above could be a brutal denial of service. Followed by a massive PR s##tstorm.

Disclaimer: I don't advocate doing anything like that. I just point out that there might be a way to weaponise the backfire...

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I believe that the only party that suffers from those sanctions are actually the populations living in those dictatorships who don't have a say about who is their leader. Who does actually benefit from them and who do they really harm?

<comment><USER52> I frankly never quite understood the extremely high stance against Iran.

Iran has not really stage any offensive wars since 1856 (and most of the XIXe century wars were in fact to recover/maintain control over the Persian Empire which was slowly eaten by the Russian and the UK).

Since 1940, Iran was constantly meddled with by foreign powers, first being invaded during the WW2 by the Allies and the Soviets, with the Soviet reluctantly leaving the country after 1945.

Then the democratically elected Mosaddegh was deposed by the MI6 and the CIA because of "precious Oil". A "Pro-Western" dictatorial government was was put in place. This regime was of course brutal but also at odds with the population and its traditions, leading to a revolution in 1979.

In the midst of this revolution, Irak, another "Western backed" dictatorship tried to profit from the chaos to invade the country which lead to costly a 8 years war leaving ~1 Million people dead. This war is probably the last high intensity conventional war between 2 roughly equals and relatively developed countries to date.

And then in the 2000, it has seen two countries at its borders being invaded by historically hostile powers. And then these countries collapsed into chaos (And I'm even forgetting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 80ies).

And lately, after lengthily and complex negotiations, an international accord was signed, just to be thrown out of the window 1 year later by the US, the US then bullying other signatories into not abiding by said accord.

No wonders Iran government stance can be a bit tense at time and that they want the Bomb to be at peace.

<comment><USER53> > Then the democratically elected Mosaddegh was deposed

Mossadegh was not democratically elected. He was appointed by a dictator. The only part of that process that was even slightly democratic, was indirectly via Majlis vote. The people of Iran never specifically elected Mossadegh.

> No wonders Iran government stance can be a bit tense at time and that they > want the Bomb to be at peace.

How does being at peace square with constantly calling for the genocide of Israel across decades and very aggressively funding terrorism & militias? The Iranian people have been protesting their military adventures in Syria as one recent example. Iran is every bit as dirty as the US and Russia when it comes to such activities over the decades in the Middle East.

<comment> EB-Barrington Mossadegh was appointed Prime Minister, by the Shah, after a nomination from the Iran Majlis (Parliament). The system of representative democracy that allowed his appointment is similar to many countries around the world today, where the people do not select the leader, the people vote for the members of Parliament, who in turn select the leader (such as Australia).

The Shah carried out the appointment, only after the democratically elected parliament members nominated Mossadegh in an overwhelming majority vote).

This could be considered "slightly more democratic", only if you consider the Australia to be "slightly more democratic" than a dictatorship such as North Korea.

I'm not going to attempt to untangle your final paragraph, only to say you have made some very large claims without any sources to back up your claims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Dear mods, you have now twice changed the description, which I understand. But would it be too much to ask to have an indication that shows that someone who is NOT the OP has changed the description? The way it is currently worded are simply not my words and I have no way of showing that. Could potentially be bad for me.

<comment><USER54> You'd have a better chance shooting them an email. Contact is at the bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> The user says he's connected to Slack from an Iranian IP address 6 months ago. That's likely the reason Slack was able to pinpoint him.

<comment><USER56> So if you once log in during a holiday trip to iran your account gets blocked

<comment><USER57> Iran's been on my list of "wanna go" destinations for a while (Food and architecture mainly). Looks like I'd have to choose between that and having any connection with a US based company. Great.

<comment><USER58> Everyone I have ever met that has been to Iran absolutely raves about it. I've never met a single person that didn't extend their stay, and doesn't rate it as hands down the best country they have ever been to.

It's very, very high on my list. But if you have an American or British passport you currently can't go without an escort.

(I'm an Overlander, I drove AK-Argentina and am now driving right around Africa. I've met 200+ people that have been to Iran)

<comment><USER55> This sounds a bit interesting, extending trips doesn't sound like a common occurrence, but you say you met 200+ people that did just that?

<comment><USER58> Oh, extending is super-common. Once you're in a country it's really easy to extend your visa, even if was hard to get in the first place.

I extended in Angola when getting a visa there was hard, I extended it in Mali, Zimbabwe, just looked into it in Ethiopia, etc.

Of course, as Overlanders we have our own vehicles are I'd say 50% of us are not time limited [1], so we just stay as long as we want in countries we like.

[1] NOTE: Many of us - me included - are money limited, not time limited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> OFAC's General License D-1 provides Slack with exemptions to offer their services even to users based in Iran:

(a) Effective February 7, 2014, to the extent that such transactions are not exempt from the prohibitions of the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations, 31 C.F.R. Part 560 ("ITSR"), and subject to the restrictions set forth in paragraph (b), the following transactions are authorized: (1) Fee- based services. The exportation or reexportation, directly or indirectly, from the United States or by a U.S. person, wherever located, to Iran of fee-based services incident to the exchange of personal communications over the Intemet, such as instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web browsing, and blogging.

[https://www.treasury.gov/resource- center/sanctions/Programs/...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource- center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/iran_gld1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER60> As an outsider, I am really surprised by how deep-rooted America's hostility is towards Iran. Shi'ite Iran certainly has human rights issues, but as far as terrorism is concerned the majority of them are orchestrated by Sunni groups. 9/11 hijackers, Al Queda, Islamic State, Paris attackers - are all Sunni.

<comment><USER61> Iran is an easy enemy for the US government to offer to its citizens.

Because of the fairly harsh anti-US rhetoric circulated by the Iranian government to its citizens since the revolution (itself because of our previous support of the Shah and current support of Israel) for purposes of maintaining power, it's easy to say "Look, Iran hates America."

The Shia / Sunni distinction is largely lost on the average American.

And just as a personal note, almost every Iranian I've met in the US has been an awesome person. They've got a fascinating history and culture.

<comment><USER62> To be completely fair about the last point, immigrants you meet in the US are not a representative sample. I say this as an immigrant myself. The Bangladeshis and Pakistanis I've met in the US are educated and relatively liberal, having gotten through our immigration filters. But the beliefs and attitudes of people back in the country are totally different. For example, American muslims are slightly more liberal than americans as a whole on homosexuality, and 60% of Americans say society should accept homosexuality. In Pakistan it's 2%: [http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/06/04/the-global-divide- on-hom...](http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/06/04/the-global-divide-on- homosexuality))

Also relevant: [https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiM...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiM2aSRw67fAhXHpFkKHUYGAhYQzPwBegQIARAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.radiofarda.com%2Fa%2Fshiraz- mp-accuses-rouhani-suppressing-iran- history%2F29558964.html&psig=AOvVaw2WossgQlvRLbpJ4tYATlJX&ust=1545399294800903)

<comment><USER63> (Some) Pakistani-Americans I've met who've grown up here have told me that my parents should be executed for being Ahmadis once an Islamic State has been established (but graciously offered them a one time chance to repent). So much for the immigration filter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I think this highlights the precarious situation most people find themselves in today when it comes to communication channels and data that is being stored in the cloud. We tend to assume that we have rights and that wrongs will eventually be righted. But in practical reality this isn't necessarily true.

Speaking of which, are there any open source alternatives to Slack which anyone could recommend?

<comment><USER65> Zulip chat is open source, free, can be self hosted and there is no limit on the number of chat messages. Zulip even has a usable mobile client and a healthy user community. Their support is excellent. Also Zulip has proper threading of messages to avoid notification fatigue. Much better workflow even it's otherwise almost identical in terms of features.

There is also matrix (riot.im) which is fully decentralized though the UX still needs a lot of work last time I checked.

<comment><USER64> After some searching I discovered [https://mattermost.com/](https://mattermost.com/). Anyone have experience with this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Me and some of my colleagues are also Iranians living abroad, and this morning our account was deleted! We were already thinking to move to a self-hosted solution (rocket.chat likely), and this is a good reason to prioritize it.

</comment><comment><USER67> This happened to our cofounder as well.

His Slack account was blocked today, with that same message.

The crazy thing is that he's Irish and living in the EU, with no actual ties with the countries being mentioned.

He does travel for business purposes outside of Europe, but again, not in the listed countries.

<comment><USER68> Ireland, Iran, common mixup. /s

<comment><USER35> We have people confuse it in my office actually, new hires will just assume Ireland is 'IR' not 'IE' and enter stuff into the system as country of origin 'IR' which throws off all sorts of red flags in our system, similarly when they see 'KR' as country of origin they freak out thinking it's North Korea not South Korea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> This is why we all should not be using these kinds of services, at least in a production setting. We should run our own services based on open source software, federate them, share and improve them, and never depend on any third party.

</comment><comment><USER70> "originating from" is an interesting phrase as far as the internet goes and people's mobility.

Is that when the account was first used? Majority of use related to IP? Something to do with the email address?

<comment><USER71> I would probably guess it's geolocation at time of registration.

<comment><USER72> He says he created the account in Canada: [https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1075691620081623041](https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1075691620081623041)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> There is Mattermost [https://mattermost.com/](https://mattermost.com/)

</comment><comment><USER74> First off, as many know, this is not a single incident. This has happened to many of us (including me) from "sanctioned" countries. (I am from Iran, but live in Germany)

But this makes me think. Many of the services I use are from US companies. Most notable are: Gmail (Google Drive, Google Calendar, etc.), Github, Dropbox, Trello and Toggl. Should I be worried? Should I actually start switching away from these services before they close my accounts and remove all my data without notice?

<comment><USER75> Toggl is not US, it's from EU. But even as an European I feel uneasy when dealing with US companies, because the political landscape there seems to be quite unhinged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Internal communication: "Hi John, We need to ban users from Iran, NK, Cuba, Syria or else we'll be ruined by Treasury Department.*

Not a conspiracy, IMO, just taking shortcuts to be "better safe than sorry." So what a few thousand users are incorrectly banned? We'll restore many of them one by one but at least we'll be fine with the US Gov. Plus, depends on what the government says "users" mean. If you used Slack in Iran...what's Slack to do?

</comment><comment><USER77> It's mildly satisfying to play the world's tiniest open-source violin[1] again, but nothing will change, HN outrage notwithstanding.

Unaffected orgs will just keep on using slack, as will many affected orgs, and Free alternatives and irc will be mocked and laughed at by next week for being inconvenient and old in comparison to yet another proprietary solution, or even slack itself.

If you rely on communication, and you don't control your communication, you can't rely on that communication.

There'll be a reminder in 2025.

1\. [https://xkcd.com/743/](https://xkcd.com/743/) (and it really should be a Free Software violin now. If you ever wondered about the difference outside of licenses: this is it.)

</comment><comment><USER78> Disclosure: ChatGrape.com CEO

We are based in the EU and can offer an embargo-free and on-prem capable environment.

</comment><comment><USER79> As far as I remember Slack does not ask/hold any information about your nationality. I wonder if he created his account when he was visiting one of the listed countries and for some reason, Slack is just using that information to block accounts.

</comment><comment><USER80> Sanctions are a very blunt instrument; sanctions will always harm people we like, indeed often the very people we want to help with the sanctions.

You can disagree with the idea of sanctions based upon this, but this is how sanctions work. Companies need to comply with sanctions and the repercussions of not complying can be severe.

I'm not sure WHY Slack chose this method to respond to the sanctions, nor why they've chosen to do this at time. Slack may have received a shoulder tap from a US agency that forced their hand or their legal department got cold feet. Until we know for sure, this seems like a overly cautious approach but not some kind of nefarious scheme.

<comment><USER81> "the very people we want to help with the sanctions"

That was funny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Self-hosted, decentralised solutions such as Matrix ([https://matrix.org](https://matrix.org)) are available, and allow you to keep control of your own access and data.

<comment><USER83> I keep hearing people complain about Matrix's interface (Riot), but the little I've used Slack, it looks exactly the same except for the color scheme.

<comment><USER82> Riot is currently undergoing a lot of UX work, the results look really promising. Take a look in January for an update.

Disclaimer: I work on Matrix (should have made that clear in the parent comment too)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> An iranian friend, living and working in Berlin, also lost his accounts today. He received the same email and lost access to all his accounts, no prior notice. That's really infuriating.

</comment><comment><USER85> This appears to be the state of play. User is accused of doing violating TOS and gets auto banned. No appeal, no recourse, no way of getting their info. Imagine kicked out of somewhere, like a hotel, based on an accusation and then not even being able to get your stuff. While property law allows us opportunity to have our possessions returned, requiring the other party to return it to us, in cases like these however, who owns the text messages, emails, photos? How can we retrieve them?

</comment><comment><USER86> The vast majority of Slack accounts are tied to a paying employer[^1], and yet most of the responses we've seen are individuals (justifiably!) upset they've been barred access from their work tool. I'm curious to see how companies respond to Slack disrupting the productivity of their salaried employees.

^1: Well, hmm, I wonder what % of active instances are on a free tier, but that's a separate unrelated question

</comment><comment><USER87> If you want to know what protocols are real alternatives, take a look at the second last column (IETF):

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UlA4-tslROBDS9IqHal...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UlA4-tslROBDS9IqHalWVztqZo7uxlCeKPQ-8uoFOU/)

(I didn't make that spreadsheet, but found it quite interesting when it was posted on HN a few weeks ago)

</comment><comment><USER88> If anyone did notice the hashtag on his twitter. Iranian permanent residency applicants in Canada are being thoroughly scrutinized before granting them permanent residency in Canada and hence the hashtag. AFAIK, citizens from a couple of nationalities undergo this vetting process by Canadian immigration before being granted permanent residency in Canada. This is probably a call to get attention for the campaign.

</comment><comment><USER89> This is almost certainly the result of adding a new compliance product feed (which may have false positives). I remember having to implement one for an acquired ecommerce site. The feed by it's nature was prone to false positives (it matched on name). However, there was an internal appeals process with the ability to override whereas if this is new to slack they are probably overwhelmed

</comment><comment><USER51> Why don't you use a free alternative as Matrix? If you self host, then you are the only one who controls who your users are.

<comment><USER72> It's not always your choice, and getting an organization to switch may be quite hard. Although Slack seems to be trying to help by pulling a stunt like this.

<comment><USER6> If I were in charge of an organization that used Slack for communication, I would immediately search for and start using an alternative service which would be hosted on premises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> This is really concerning. Slack is starting to worry us like FB has continued to do. The good news is there are alternative services that I see that can do most, if not all of what Slack does with better security, privacy, and performance.

I'm getting fed up with paying for a bloated Electron app with nice colors and now improved with tracking of it's users.

</comment><comment><USER91> By the way, I am currently investigating an issue were auto-upload of my holiday pictures in Iran to OneDrive is somehow not possible. All those pictures are location-tagged by my iPhone. Maybe it is just an coincidence with a bug, but it is strange. I am now in Germany (I am "pure" German), so in general it should work.

</comment><comment><USER92> In this modern age it seems it's not safe to list anything which might come back to haunt you, including ethnicity.

<comment><USER93> Face recognition will solve that for you.

<comment><USER57> Good luck guessing ethnicity for Iran. There will be many who look less middle-eastern than your average "Californian with a tan". You'd have the same problem with most near-east or Mediterranean countries. Being at the crossroads for a few millennia will do that to a place.

<comment><USER94> This holds up if you imagine the profiling as done by humans. However, neural networks already surpass human ability in some computer vision tasks. The features the trained models come up with can go way past what we might consider visual likeness. The algorithmic method might eventually become 99.999% efficient at racial profiling with the help of something as ridiculous as fingerprinting eyebrow strand distribution & orientations. The right way forward is to fully consider the ethical implications when shaping these policies, regardless of technological ability.

<comment><USER95> > 99.999% efficient at racial profiling

Next on HN: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Race

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> 1) Is there a way to sync your Slack with a Mattermost or similar? It's nice to have both public and private in case one dies.

2) The US has a reputation for being quite aggressive with certain things. Can't be surprised if some firms take steps that seem overkill. Not that it makes it better, but rocks and hard places.

<comment><USER97> There is an unofficial solution called matterbridge but it's not great. I would just recommend taking regular backups of your slack data, you can export it to Mattermost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> Its quite simple: don't use Slack. Its a walled garden and there will always be incidents like this for as long as people don't appreciate that these companies don't have any commitment to you, for as long as you are just using their services for free.

Use IRC. Its not nearly as walled off.

</comment><comment><USER99> 1\. The export control regulations apply to companies and individuals who do business with any of the sanctioned countries.

2\. Discrimination based on ethnicity, religion or political views is forbidden by law.

In the absence of proof that this user had business with Iran (or any of the other sanctioned countries) through Slack's platform, the export control regulations do not apply.

If the user has business with Iran outside of Slack's platform, Slack can not invoke the export control regulations to justify their action.

Ergo, the only thing left here is that Slack broke the law that forbids discrimination based on ethnicity.

If the USA fails to punish Slack for it's illegal behavior, and Slack successfully avoids prosecution elsewhere, other country have the right to block access to Slack completely, from within their own borders.

Personally, I think US citizens should be more concerned with what their government does, especially to and with other parts of the world. For eventually, the will feel the consequences of those actions on their own skin.

<comment><USER100> >2\. Discrimination based on ethnicity, religion or political views is forbidden by law.

>Ergo, the only thing left here is that Slack broke the law that forbids discrimination based on ethnicity.

There's no evidence that's the case. Most likely it's done based on IP geolocation. A white (for lack of a better term) Canadian who was using slack in Iran would probably be banned as well.

>In the absence of proof that this user had business with Iran (or any of the other sanctioned countries) through Slack's platform, the export control regulations do not apply.

Banning based on IP geolocation is not perfect by any means, but what's the alternative here? That you ask suspected Iranian users to check a box saying "I'm not an Iranian, pinky swear!"?

<comment><USER99> > Banning based on IP geolocation is not perfect by any means, but what's the > alternative here? That you ask suspected Iranian users to check a box saying > "I'm not an Iranian, pinky swear!"?

The export regulations apply to business. In order for it to apply, there needs to be proof of a business relationship. Simply being Iranian or having non-business related communication with Iran, which is the only thing IP geolocation on its own indicates, does not warrant invoking this law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> I'm always impressed by the real discussions that take place here in the HN comments section. They're characterized by civility, respect, and intelligent perspectives; great community to be a part of, for sure.

</comment><comment> maze-le Great time and reason to migrate to a self-hosted mattermost solution. Time and time again these incidents show that centralized services cannot be trusted with company service infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER102> This kind of treating user accounts and data like a Recycle Bin should be abandoned. If you , Slack , could do whatever u like with the things you don't create, you're a trash, too.

</comment><comment><USER103> We have the same problem in Ukraine. Today many Ukrainian account was blocked with the reason "originating from Crimea region of Ukraine". But they are not from this regions ...

</comment><comment><USER104> I wonder if this was one of the things that shook out as they started IPO prep. I imagine there's some checklist provided by the banks they're working with and this was on it?

</comment><comment><USER105> Use a VPN? We Americans have to use them to get around dumb laws and help protect our privacy, too. There is almost always a digital solution to digital problems. Bypass them.

</comment><comment><USER106> I think Slack is sending a clear and strong message: use a VPN!

<comment><USER6> Or use open source alternatives instead.

<comment><USER107> This! Open source helps protect users' freedoms.

However, I am sympathetic when you're talking about software that needs to be run server side. Because in that case, you almost always have to deploy and manage the infrastructure yourself (or know somebody to do it that you trust), which is just too much for most people.

With chat specifically, you might be able to avoid self-hosting by using something that supports federation. Personally I'm rooting for Matrix to establish itself here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> If Slack has a presence in France, they can be sued for this. And I think in any country with anti-discrimination laws which I thought included many US states?

<comment><USER42> Highlight doubt that. France and Europe have similar sanctions.

We had an alumni from my university who opened a company and sold some stuff to a client in a middle east country. Hardware parts, not software. One shipment got stopped at the border for a random control, before the police showed up at the office and arrested everyone. Turns out there are sanctions. Couldn't sell there.

<comment><USER109> The main issue seems to be that they are not only blocking people actually in embargoed countries, and furthermore not only nationals of that country, but everyone who has ever used the service from an IP geolocated - or otherwise - associated with embargoed countries.

If former nationals are more likely to have visited an embargoed country, it could conceivably fall under discrimination laws.

But it is probably even more problematic if using a service from an country specific IP actually should triggers the embargo from a legal point of view?

Then we have a problem, because suddenly you won't be able to use your phone, even turn it on at all while traveling an embargoed country if this starts to be applied broadly.

Furthermore, it would imply that things like a single BGP route hijack could kill all of a company's accounts on any US service, without recourse.

If this would be the case, using any service from a country interpreting embargoes this way becomes an impossibly risky proposition. Which was probably not the intent of the embargo.

<comment><USER42> Agreed. It's very obvious that Slack has zero experience dealing with regulations. They totally went overboard with deleting any account that ever connected from a restricted location.

There is no conflict with discrimination though. Sanctions takes precedence over pretty much everything else.

Don't expect your phone and applications to be usable when you travel to Iran/Syria, many services won't work. There was a news not long ago about Google Cloud blocking network access from Iran.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> So for those of you who live in uninitiated bubbles, realize the same literal thing can happen to your bank accounts at any time.

</comment><comment><USER111> Without spending a lot of time on this, I don't believe that Slack just used ethnicity to ban this account. Could the OP have been using VPNs or something that led Slack to believe his IPs were coming from IRAN? I don't see Slack doing anything differently, and all this "outrage" seems to be unfounded at this point.

Edit: one thought, hopefully they can open a new Slack account with IPs originating in Canada and Slack can copy/move/reinstate the account.

<comment><USER111> Not sure why the downvotes? It's pretty obvious there's a lot of jumping to conclusions in the first 10 comments (that's all I read) on that Twitter thread, basically implying that Slack is using ethnicity to close the account and not something more technical like an IP address that was tied to Iran at one point in time.

It seems from reading other comments that this Slack team was created when he was in Iran from an Iranian IP. And they used originating IP when the team was created and not access to determine. We can debate the proper technical solution to base the rule when you apply it across your SaaS-based application at world-scale, but implying that Slack did this on race is pretty absurd at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER112> That's pretty much the point of sanctions, what did you think was going to happen, people of sanctioned countries getting a medal? The point is to put as much pressure on those countries as possible and there is no better way to pressure a country than to pressure its people to force a change. The question should be whether or not Iran should be sanctioned. But if you agree that it should then this is an example of a perfectly reasonable outcome.

</comment><comment><USER113> One more reason to do away with government regulated companies and move towards decentralized softwares

</comment><comment><USER114> This why, at least, Techsavy people should avoid depending on centralized services for their work.

</comment><comment><USER115> Is this because of export controls on encryption? Or something else?

<comment><USER116> It's not export control, it's a US trade embargo: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iran)

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> Root causes analysis here should be yield some interesting results.

</comment><comment><USER118> I'm sure there are thousands of Iranian Americans working on Slack that also visit their relatives back home at some point, including ones working at Slack HQ. How far can this logic go?

</comment><comment><USER119> I would expect a lot more from Slack.

</comment><comment><USER120> whelp, guess I'll never promote slack in my company.

</comment><comment><USER121> Use Telegram :)

</comment><comment><USER122> How can we coordinate to stop this from continuing?

</comment><comment><USER123> Does Chrome need to ban Iranian users to?

</comment><comment><USER47> Few days ago i was in UAE and saw fishing boats carrying gadgets like iPad, iPhones and Macs into Iran.

Obviously, looking from outside you can't tell that this rotten boat is carrying expensive gadgets. I saw this because my friend owns a wharehouse and he had to put some of his stuff into same boat.

Funny thing is Tinder is available in Iran and i used it there when i was at home for vacation.

</comment><comment><USER124> Saudi Arabia is a large investor in Slack. Probably doesn't mean much here, but you never know.

<comment><USER125> United States sanctions: [https://www.treasury.gov/resource- center/sanctions/Programs/...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource- center/sanctions/Programs/pages/iran.aspx)

<comment><USER124> What do U.S. sanctions have to do with somebody who isn't in Iran?

Is Twitter, Google, Microsoft behaving the same here?

P.S. On a side note, if these sanctions are really about 'punishing the regime', blocking mediums for Iranians to speak on isn't a way to do it, but what do I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Serious question: Would this have anything to do with selecting Goldman Sachs as the handler for their IPO?

<comment><USER126> What are you implying?

<comment><USER44> Goldman Sachs has been the central player in major financial scandals in the past, proven documented, well known.

I don't think they do anything completely cleanly, so I question the thinking for Silicon Valley Unicorns using them to head their IPOs

Greece the 2008 crisis buyouts 1MDB

Look at the 1MDB scandal, where we are only now seeing charges coming against GS - The 1MDB and Greece scandals are very similar in the sense that GS had information regarding both situations which they knew was criminal, but chose to profit from it as opposed to prevent it. Knowing that their profiting would outweigh the consequences.

They are the antithesis of "in good faith" actors - and as such, I personally question the integrity of the companies and company founders who put their IPOs in GS' hands.

Look at FB... we know where their integrity lies.

I am reminded of the "How I built This" episode on Slack, and how it grew and the values of its founder -- which I now take with a grain of salt given that they are going with GS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER122> I wonder if anyone from my company (a unicorn) has been shut down.

</comment><comment><USER127> Now if Twitter would only ban people working for Russia, even when they live in the White House.

<comment><USER128> Are you disappointed that someday we're going to stop killing children in Syria?

(Note: we haven't actually stopped yet.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER129> Throwing out an idea for one reason this could happen: Perhaps Slack received a legal order that only specified names (such as some kind of watchlist), and they had no choice but to comply.

</comment><comment><USER13> Can someone point to a change in US sanctions that would have caused this now?

Can someone explain an interpretation of US sanctions that causes situations like this?

This could be US sanctions or it could be a companies poor reading of them.

</comment><comment><USER130> This is probably just one of many PR attempts from Slack. All closed accounts are probably owned by their PR team, or they prefer buzz over users. What about Google, Facebook and Twitter, are they closing down Iranian accounts too !?

</comment><comment><USER68> He's kind of an odd one. I think this might be about his citizenship, not his ethnicity. And his behavior:

[https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1059225338650144774?s=12](https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1059225338650144774?s=12)

The notion that the US conducts military operations "only" to exploit oil is a popular one but it's not very nuanced thinking, and dances close to extremism. I haven't spent the time to read what else this guy espouses but I suspect the ethnicity card is being played to hype up some drama when there are other issues at play.

</comment><comment><USER131> This guy is straight up lying, with no intention of correctly his false claim this is racial targeting.

Even after confirming with a white person banned for using slack while visiting Iran, he continued to claim in the thread it is racial.

Reality: he was banned for using slack with an Iranian IP.

Whether or not that's export control overreach / unethical / bad business not my point, it's clearly very different to ethnic targeting.

</comment><comment><USER132> FYI US export controls generally apply to nationals of an embargoed country even when they are outside of that country. Is the person in question an Iranian national or does slack have reason to believe? Then they are required to not provide their export controlled product, service or knowledge. The us government does not offer a "graceful" stoppage of service allowance.

Yes this is annoying but probably not slacks fault.

<comment><USER16> This is still Slack's fault as well.

It's unethical to enforce unethical rules, even if the government tells you to.

<comment><USER132> I think it is Slacks fault for not being in compliance with export laws originally.

Their non-compliance is fact.

Whether or not you consider that law to be ethical is opinion.

I was not stating an opinion, merely stating fact. I was not trying to start a discussion of politics. I appologize if I was misunderstood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER133> [https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1075691620081623041](https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1075691620081623041)

This is almost certainly related to the user's travel to Iran, and not any form of racial profiling. Everybody please remain calm.

It's emblematic of today's society that at the first mention of ethnicity, everybody grabs their anti-racism pitchforks. I agree racism is a problem, but let's treat it appropriately. We need to look at it more like drug addiction today (an invisible psychological problem that can be healed), and less like drug addiction 30 years ago (a moral failing that must be punished).

<comment><USER133> Really? Unexplained downvotes? At least do me the courtesy of explaining why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER134> As bad as it may sound, but from what I can read in the tweets, he did violate the sanctions by using slack while being in iran.

Well, that is called breaking the law and I fully understand why slack terminated his account when he broke the law and violated their terms of service.

For example, other services or tools (like cisco anyconnect) clearly state, that you are not allowed to use them when in embargoed contries.

<comment><AUTHOR> He lives and works in Canada. I cannot see how this is violating canadian laws.

<comment><USER135> It sounds like he accessed Slack from an Iranian IP at some point in the past. Though I'm not sure that's actually breaking the law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER125> Smart move. This shouldn't surprise anyone that makes a point of avoiding US prosecution and jail:

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/07/huawei-cfo-accused-of- frau...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/07/huawei-cfo-accused-of-fraud-faces- up-to-30-years-in-prison/)

[https://www.bassberrygovcontrade.com/iran-sanction- violation...](https://www.bassberrygovcontrade.com/iran-sanction-violations/)

<comment><USER16> Banning people because of the country they were born in is not "smart", it's abhorrent.

That the US, supposedly the leader of the free world, is threatening prosecution and jail to those who want to treat everyone in the world equally, is a ludicrous state of affairs.

<comment><USER47> Country is made up of its citizens.

If a country does smth, citizens are punished.

This has been case throughout the history.

Alexander took the losing kingdom's citizen as slaves and American bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, again the citizens of Japan who were living there.

<comment><USER16> So when were the citizens of the US punished for their government bombing Japan?

EDIT: Also, in a different comment in this thread, you claim to be Iranian. Why are you defending sanctions against the country that you are from?

<comment><USER136> > So when were the citizens of the US punished for their government bombing > Japan?

About the same time as Japanese citizens were punished for the Bataan Death March, the Rape of Nanking, and the Korean Comfort Women.

Besides, since when is it appropriate to "punish" a country for winning a war in which it was aggressed against?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Technical Writing: Learning from Kernighan - <AUTHOR> https://two-wrongs.com/technical-writing-learning-from-kernighan.html <comment><USER2> > The tutorial throws the user straight into the experience of using awk. > There is no theoretical discussion first; there are no installation > instructions; the first thing you see is an input example and a short > program doing something with that input. They even get to the expected > output on the very first page.

Babies learn a language by hearing you talk. In other words, by example. No one has become fluent in a language through theoretical discourse and grammatical diagrams.

That is counterintuitive. You would think you would learn better by having someone explain it to you, instead of throwing a mish-mash of examples your way. But that's not the truth. The truth is we learn by example and practice. Eventually you want the explanations, to round out your understanding. But it doesn't make sense until you have got your hands dirty.

So that's a lesson for anyone wanting to teach anything. It's okay to have a little introduction, but try to get to concrete examples as soon as possible.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. And this applies to mathematics too. Here is Ralph Boas, in _Can We Make Mathematics Intelligible?_ following his own advice:

> Suppose you want to teach the 'cat' concept to a very young child. Do you > explain that a cat is a relatively small, primarily carnivorous mammal with > retractable claws, a distinctive sonic output, etc.? I'll bet not. You > probably show the kid a lot of different cats saying 'kitty' each time until > it gets the idea. To put it more generally, generalizations are best made by > abstraction from experience.

(See also Tim (Sir Timothy) Gowers on Examples first: [https://gowers.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/my-favourite- pedagog...](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/my-favourite-pedagogical- principle-examples-first/) and [https://gowers.wordpress.com/2007/10/24/examples-first- ii/](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2007/10/24/examples-first-ii/))

(I frankly think this applies to the accursed phenomenon of monad tutorials in Haskell too ([https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3261729/monad-in-non- pro...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3261729/monad-in-non-programming- terms/3261837#3261837)), but some disagree.)

<comment><USER4> The idea of teaching using extensional definitions (an expanding list of examples) is fine, but I came across a weird case of it at a bicycle repair workshop a few years ago.

It's a bizarre example, but it went like this.

Audience: what's a fixed gear bike?

Repair guy: it's uh, it's like a unicycle, for example...

In that scenario an intensional definition is really the way to go. I don't understand how that bicycle repair guys mind worked at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Having ridden both fixies and unicycles, the example makes total sense. "It's like a pennyfarthing" works too. The issue is that examples are meant to leverage the recipients intuition. Very few people have intuition for unicycles and pennyfarthings, so the examples fall flat.

That said, "It's like a children's unicycle" would probably count as a valid example too, and refers to something people may have intuition for. But it may also stress the wrong parts of the example. We want to convey the sense of direct drive, not circus prop.

<comment><USER5> > That said, "It's like a children's unicycle"

Tricycle? Or I'm very interested in a culture where children's unicycles are a common thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, tricycle, of course. If anyone figures out where this children's unicycle culture is I may want to move there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kernighan also has a very well written book called Understand the Digital World, which is an introductions to computer and network technology for a non- technical person. It touches on binary, assembly language, and a few higher level programming languages while emphasizing the general idea of what a computer can and cannot do. It also includes very up to date discussions of how networks work (at a high level) and online privacy and, encryption and security.

His ability to explain highly technical concepts to someone with no assumed computing background in concise and lucid prose is really impressive.

<comment><USER7> Most people when they ask me where they can learn basic things I recommend that book. It even covers basic programming in js.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll call out another book for being a great piece of technical writing: Unix Shell Programming[0]. It similarly follows the structure of introduction, complete description (if not full-depth out of necessity), intermediate, and advanced techniques, and some reference material.

The running example throughout the book is to build an address book program called "rolo" (Rolodex, get it?), and the authors do a nice job of progressively building the features while illustrating useful techniques that are generally applicable.

I've not read the 3rd edition, but I can vouch for the fact that the 2nd would be getting a little dated by now. Still, it's well-written, well-structured, and a great introduction to most of the shell concepts that you use.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Unix-Shell-Programming-Stephen- Kochan...](https://www.amazon.com/Unix-Shell-Programming-Stephen- Kochan/dp/0672324903)

</comment><comment><USER9> I think this is excellent advice. From the small amounts I've read, the other thing these books do well is connect what the reader already knows to what's being taught.

My only quibble is that I suspect minimalism is more a matter of taste than a widely applicable principle of solid technical writing. I've learned a lot from minimal books, but I've also learned a lot from books that incorporate screen shots or full-color illustrations. This isn't to say minimalism didn't work well for Kernighan-just that it's not as generalizable as the other principles.

FYI, You can read both the The C Programming Language [0] and The AWK Programming Language [1] at the Internet Archive.

[0]: [https://archive.org/details/TheCProgrammingLanguageFirstEdit...](https://archive.org/details/TheCProgrammingLanguageFirstEdition)

[1]: [https://archive.org/details/awkprogrammingla00ahoa](https://archive.org/details/awkprogrammingla00ahoa)

<comment><USER10> A counterpoint would be Knuth's The TeXbook. In that book, Knuth explains every feature of TeX in excruciating detail, without being boring. He could have made the book 1/4 the size, but the book would have been worse for it.

<comment><USER11> The TeXbook has a lot of examples too, and Knuth makes very good use of the fact that it was _itself_ written in TeX to illustrate the functionality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I agree with the observations made in this article, with regards to structure and content. As a consumer of technical documentation, my top five pet-peeves are:

1\. Long histories about the origins of the technology. I couldn't care less. For me, the purpose of reading a technical book is to accomplish something technical. Historical anecdotes, while interesting, don't help.

2\. Overly complex code samples and projects. It is really easy for me to read a simple example and extrapolate that into something greater. It is more difficult to decipher a complex example, reduce it to its basic parts, and then extrapolate the few bits I need. This is why I don't like _project books_ , where the author guides me through developing software to run a video store, for instance. The code samples are not self-contained and the likelihood I'm going to write video store software is literally zero. It is possible to explain complex ideas with short, self-contained code. I think Avdi Grimm does a good job of writing this kind of documentation.

3\. Chapters that cover the installation of the technology on every operating system known to man. I'd rather Bing that information or have it in an appendix. There is no need to waste Chapter 2 delving into it.

4\. API or library documentation that doesn't include code samples and clear descriptions of what I can pass in and what I should expect out.

5\. Formatting. For example, I never liked Wrox books because of the minimalistic whitespace. The books probably contained excellent information, but the formatting was hard to look at and didn't leave any space for me to write annotations.

During my career, I've found that the books that address these five issues are the books I tend to keep. They also seem to be the most popular in their respective communities.

</comment><comment><USER13> From the article: Blaise Pascal summarised it by saying that "I would have written you a shorter email, but I did not have the time."

That's impressive, as he died over 300 years before email was invented.

<comment><USER14> That's why it was only just now delivered.

<comment><USER15> Imagine how long it would have taken if it were shorter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's quite a series of books co-authored by Kernighan, all excellent. Three others are _The UNIX Programming Environment,_ _Software Tools_ (in Ratfor and Pascal), and _The Elements of Programming Style._

They are classics for many reasons, including how far you get in such short books.

<comment><USER17> Totally agree. Just found a few more from the Wikipedia page about Kernighan:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Kernighan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Kernighan)

The Elements of Programming Style (1974, 1978) with P. J. Plauger

Software Tools (1976) with P. J. Plauger

The C Programming Language (1978, 1988) with Dennis M. Ritchie

Software Tools in Pascal (1981) with P. J. Plauger

The Unix Programming Environment (1984) with Rob Pike

The AWK Programming Language (1988) with Alfred Aho and Peter J. Weinberger

The Practice of Programming (1999) with Rob Pike

AMPL: A Modeling Language for Mathematical Programming, 2nd ed. (2003) with Robert Fourer and David Gay

D is for Digital: What a well-informed person should know about computers and communications (2011)[12]

The Go Programming Language(2015)[13]

Understanding the Digital World: What You Need to Know about Computers, the Internet, Privacy, and Security (2017)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _You often see a whole chapter in the beginning devoted to explaining the > philosophy behind the technology, rather than letting the user get a feel > for the philosophy themselves, by doing._

I agree that this is annoying. As an author, it's very tempting, since you want to explain why your solution is better than all the other solutions that came before. But the vast majority of readers won't know anything about the other solutions and just want to know what your thing does. The "Avail" language page posted yesterday [1] was a perfect example.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17150346](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17150346)

</comment><comment><USER19> "First of all, both books are very short"

Both tools are small and self-contained, because they date from an era when that was the style. Most programmers don't seem to want that any more. ("Those days are dead and gone and the eulogy was delivered by Perl.") They want "batteries included".

Does anyone believe that even Kernighan could write a short book covering C++17?

The most important first step, then, is picking a subject matter which it's possible to isolate. Everything has become so entangled, though, that I'm not sure how to do that any more.

<comment><USER20> > Does anyone believe that even Kernighan could write a short book covering > C++17?

I suspect that Stroustrup's "A Tour of C++" is the shortest C++ book possible. The 2013 edition ( _not_ covering C++17, obviously) has the index beginning on page 171 - astonishingly short for the complexity of C++11.

Interestingly, the quote that heads the first chapter [Edit: preface, not first chapter] is "If you wish to instruct, be brief", quoting Cicero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This post and comment thread [0] got me reading The AWK Programming Language this week, and I have to concur with the author. What a great book!

After just the first chapter I feel I understand AWK, the kinds of things it can be used for, and how to get started on some simple tasks immediately.

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17140934](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17140934)

</comment><comment><USER17> I liked the appearance of the site. Very clear and easy to read.

</comment><comment><USER22> I love his book "The Go Programming Language".

<comment><USER17> Wow, I didn't realize that makes it _four_ very good books that Kernighan has been involved with: The C Programming Language (by Kernighan and Ritchie), The Unix Programming Environment (by Kernighan and Pike), The AWK Programming Language and The Go Programming Language. I have three of the books in hard copy (and had the first two books for years, in fact, bought multiple copies, because the earlier ones wore out); the only one I do not have is the AWK book. Along with many others, I think they are (all the ones I have read) great examples of technical writing. I've conducted training for customers using the first two books (on C programming and Unix respectively), and once got a present (a quartz wall clock) from one customer (a large public sector Indian company) whose participants thought I conducted the training well. I still have the clock.

<comment><USER20> Don't forget "Software Tools" by Kernighan and Plaugher.

<comment><USER17> Good point, thanks. I haven't read it, but have read good reviews of it. A classic, I believe.

<comment><USER17> Also see my more recent comment in this thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17163276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17163276)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Blaise Pascal? E-mail?

<comment><USER24> not sure why you are being downvoted. It's a funny typo

<comment><USER25> It's not a typo, it's called "humor".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I must be tired today, I misread the title as "Technical Writing: Learning from [Sarah] _Kerrigan_."

FWIW, I would watch _the hell_ out of that tutorial.

<comment><USER27> I wonder who wrote the zerg rush ml/AI paper</comment></comment>


Tsuru 1.3.0 released, with Kubernetes support - <AUTHOR> https://blog.tsuru.io/tsuru-1-3-0-released-with-kubernetes-support-576783cc4f88 <comment><USER2> Tsuru 1.4 is on the way with storage support and even better integration with kubernetes</comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to work part time? - <AUTHOR> Hi! I've been working in technology for a long time, 20 years since I started my own little company in high school. For the last 6 years I've been privileged to work from home, mostly on open source software. This has involved a lot of travel and a LOT of hours of work per week, and the glamour of the dream career is fading. I want to simplify my life, cut my expenses, and work 2 or 3 days per week so that I can spend more time with my wife and daughter doing volunteer work and making a difference in the world. Everything I have learned about starting my own company or working at other companies points to making lots of money while working constantly, not making a small amount of money while working less. It seems like starting my own company is the only option, because every high tech company I've ever worked for wants people to work full time, and never hires part-timers.<p>Has anyone successfully moved to part time work, or started a company that allowed them to work 1000 hours a year instead of over 2000 hours a year? <comment><USER2> Yes, I work part-time essentially all the time these days. (I run a small software business and consult on the side, average 20 hours or so a week, and take off pretty much any day I feel like.) If I wanted to, I could sustain this lifestyle indefinitely.

I'm told that many consultants do something like this. If full-utilization for a consultant is $200,000 (and that is by no means a ceiling), then 50% still puts your household in a pretty decent place to be. There exist some consulting opportunities where you can schedule arbitrary amounts of work over long time scales -- I have one client relationship where, if I wanted to bill four hours on Monday and four hours on Tuesday and then never touch the keyboard again, he'd be thrilled by that. There are other opportunities if you want to parachute in, work for two weeks, and then get back to living.

<comment><USER3> How do you find your clients, and is your consulting/contracting work something a mere mortal could pull off too?

<comment><USER2> If I'm not too busy tonight with Business of Software prep work and dinner, I'll write something on my blog about it. I'm a mere mortal whose skillset is very, very difficult to hire for. That describes lots of people on HN, although the skillsets are probably different.

<comment><USER3> Cool. It would be interesting to hear more about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is definitely possible. When I was consulting, I used to take off between Thanksgiving and New Years Day every year to do nothing but decompress and dick around with whatever new technology had caught my eye.

I had a day job for a little while when I had gotten tired of the constant sales cycle of consulting. They were more than happy to let me go part time because I brought a good plan to the table - I worked 20% less and took a 12% pay cut - they got the benefit of the fact that I was learning new stuff on the day that I wasn't in the office.

Anything is possible, all you have to do is make a plan.

</comment><comment><USER5> Most people work part time anyway by procrastinating like mad :) It's not a bad a idea to put some structure to it. Protip: read The 4-hour Work Week.

</comment><comment><USER6> Look at university jobs. They even have a special term for it: 50% FTE (Full- Time Equivalent)

I'm 100% FTE at a university right now doing sysadmin/programming/network stuff for a small team and will be moving far away and telecommuting at 50% FTE in a few months.

Like patio11 says, everything is negotiable. Additionally, I did a LOT of networking (the human kind) and it paid off. The guy who hooked me up with this isn't even a tech guy -- he knew people who needed one, though.

EDIT: 50% FTE includes full retirement and health benefits, too, in my situation.

</comment><comment><USER7> Have you considered jumping on the app-store/mobile market bandwagon? It's working wonderfully for me, but it may take you a "full time" effort to find your sweet spot and start making a real living.

<comment><USER8> Can you share a little what your apps are about and how long it took to become sustainable? Not expecting vivid details, just some food for thought if that's ok.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Almost 50% of the people here in the Netherlands work part time, so I'd definitely say it's possible :)

</comment><comment><USER10> I've done this quite a lot throughout my career as I attempted to bootstrap various businesses. there are, really, two ways of going about it:

1\. scrounge for several short-term contracts.

The problem with this approach is that the life of the independent contractor is very feast or famine. My biggest problem was that I'd put effort into selling and then I'd end up with more hours of work than I wanted; then I'd pull back and I'd end up with not enough.

The advantage is that you can often charge higher hourly rates, and it doesn't require establishing yourself as difficult to replace at your current job.

You can pull it off, but there is a lot of sales and financial planning you need to do. I've personally supported myself this way for almost a year, but it was pretty difficult.

2\. talk your current employer into letting you do the same work, only two or three days a week.

(this usually involves losing your health insurance and most other benefits)

If you want to work 20 hours a week for the same employer steady-like (as opposed to scrounging for work all the time) you will have to take the job full time and make yourself hard to replace, first; then you explain the situation to the boss. I've had pretty good luck doing this... better luck, in fact, than the aforementioned 'scrounging for several small contracts' strategy. I've probably done this for a total of two years of my career (while working on prgmr.com) and they were relatively easy years (vs. my year doing #1, which was really difficult, and involved eating a lot of tuna.) This strategy results in a steadier (and for me, larger) income, and because I'm really not that good at selling 'premium products' it usually results in me earning more per hour, if you count sales effort. Someone who is better at sales might have the opposite result, just 'cause part time catch as catch can gigs often can give you better hourly rates.

</comment><comment><USER11> There are part-time gigs out there, but ime they're pretty rare, and afforded to people who've been with a company a while and 'earned' the right to the flexible working situation. Everyone else if f/t or contract.

I think you do need to move to freelance/contract work, and be firm in how you structure your work agreements. If it's MTW, with Th-Sun off, be up front about that. You'll be able to find gigs where they just need you 5-10 hours per week. Get 2-3 of those, work your time, then take time off - you should be good to go.

Most of those part-time gigs may not pay as well as f/t work, but you're looking for the time freedom, not maximized revenue anyway, right?

<http://indieconf.com> might be useful for you to attend, with respect to getting started in freelancing. We don't specifically have anything on 'going part time', but I'm sure some of the sessions can address that.

</comment><comment><USER12> I tried a couple of times to get startups that were actively recruiting me to pay me 3/5 the salary in exchange for working 3 days a week. I wanted to devote some more time to some side projects and to just generally do whatever I wanted with my time. Sounds similar to your situation.

Nobody was interested in this. They would offer me very, very generous packages, but only for full time work. This part time idea was a no-go.

Startups have this dream that every employee is in ALL THE WAY. They think it will be bad for morale if the other employees are working their asses off and you don't show up now and then.

In my opinion, this is silly. Either my services are valuable or they're not. If they are, then they are also valuable in part. But, perhaps not.

</comment><comment><USER13> I did it. My ecommerce company is doing well enough to comfortably support two people (ramen profitable --> pizza profitable --> casual dining profitable... we're just short of casual fine dining profitable, but if linear growth continues we'll be there in 6 months).

I'm not sure that I have very many useful lessons for other people, other than that it is possible to make money by selling stuff online while doing your own supply chain/order fulfillment. It took more than three years of SEO growth for us to hit critical mass.

</comment><comment><USER14> Start by floating the idea by the people paying you. Your situation and the people in your life (clients, partners, etc) are not going to be the same as everyone else so it's not going to be very relevant to your specific situation. Try transitioning rather than starting from scratch. Perhaps it's better that instead of working 2 to 3 days a week, you're working 6 months out of the year. Try going down to 4 days a week, then 3, then 2, etc. The less drastic the change the more receptive people will be to it. It's also going to be better for you as you'll adjust to the new work schedule and income over a longer period of time. You mentioned cutting expenses, just do that, you don't have to ask anyone, less expenses will make the transition easier and is never a bad idea.

You should be prepared with the concessions you're willing to make to make this happen and this will likely be asked when you float the idea.

Also, consider that you've moved up Maslow's hierarchy of needs and re- evaluate a lot of things in your life that may no longer be relevant. I'd bet you're transitioning from esteem to self-actualization. This could make cutting expenses much easier than you think it is because you no longer derive much happiness from materialism.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm not sure if this is an option for you but if you average out my hours over the year, i work part time. I'm a contractor, I work 6-8 months of the year full time, and the rest of the time i do what i like.

It does mean i have to be financially disciplined, which thankfully (after learning the hard way) does now come easy to me. It also allows me the flexibility to not be tied down to one location throughout the entire year, which working 2-3 days a week does.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have done what you suggest and having been living the "ideal life" for over 10 years. The biggest challenge was to our cost of living to about 30% of what it was on F/T work. First time I attempted the change, I got broke fast and had to get some contract work to pay off the bills and credit cards.

Once we established the required habits, we ended up with a small nest egg which has come into handy.

Although I do have to take on short consulting gigs to top up the fund, they are becoming less frequent as I we get better at managing.

The only difference is that P/T work for employers hasn't worked out as expected. Instead, I take on project oriented work which lets me bill for completed work and have deliverables and milestones that fit with the other activities. Sometimes it is tough to say No to work that has deadlines that would require working F/T or more to deliver on time.

</comment><comment><USER17> I work full-time for an avionics company building simulation software. A couple of my co-workers are part-time.

I also work part-time for a startup. In this case, I'm more of a consultant; some weeks I'm very busy, other weeks I might do nothing at all.

Part-time work is out there, but it's not always floating on the top.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yes, it's called 'contracting'.

No employer is going to let you work part time. There's a lot of time and expense involved in finding and maintaining programmers, and they'd rather have a full-timer instead.

As for starting your own company, those always take more time than a full-time job if you want to make any money.

<comment><USER2> _No employer is going to let you work part time._

Stop thinking like an engineer and start thinking like a lawyer: this, like everything else in your contract and HR handbook, is ultimately negotiable. I mean, heck, my day job put it on the table while trying to prevent me from leaving, and I was a Japanese salaryman. (They had a couple of offers -- another one involved more work and less pay.)

Any particular company may be more committed to full time employment than a Japanese megacorp, but I strongly doubt (and have personal knowledge that it is not the case) that all companies are totally committed to full-time only.

<comment><USER19> "They had a couple of offers -- another one involved more work and less pay"

Just out of curiosity, what was the reasoning behind that? Was it something that could have ended up being a good position, or was it a hand-wavy type thing?

<comment><USER2> He heard my concerns about work/life balance and family issues, and thought "10 months on, 2 months off to go see family; you won't be a salaryman anymore, so material conditions will worsen as a matter of course" would be among the better alternatives to the company losing me.

I had more compelling options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Its certainly available. I'm working part time right now doing Java and JavaScript development. My employer has stated that they'd be happy to have me full time any time I'm avaliable, but they're also happy to have me at 20 hours per week. I work at a ten-person company which probably makes some of the difference. One of my previous jobs had similar circumstances.</comment>